


alone

by ProblemBacteria



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Depression, F/M, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Modern Character in Thedas, Modern Girl in Thedas, Red Hawke (Dragon Age), but! it ends with things looking up for her, implied abusive relationship, kinda implied rivalmance, mc had been in thedas for a while, mc ignored red flags for too long bc she wanted hawke to be a hero, only hawke dies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-02
Updated: 2020-11-02
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:49:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27356794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProblemBacteria/pseuds/ProblemBacteria
Summary: When you question your own morals, you look to others to understand if what you're doing is right or wrong. If the hero is standing by you, then you can't be bad. But... Reina has a sinking feeling in her stomach. He's speaking right next to her, but his voice sounds so far away.“If you want him, he’s yours.”In which a mgit makes a decision that needed to be done. Even if it means being alone.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 55





	alone

**Author's Note:**

> isn't it wild that your companions don't do anything when you betray fenris. and how they dont say anything when you rivalmance someone  
> also. fair warning im dyslexic w/ no beta so there might be a few misspellings or wrong words in wrong places. But not too many! I did reread and edit it lmao

The first time Reina intentionally hurt someone was when she was ten. She was called to her teachers desk during recess with one of her friends. Her best friend copied off of her math test, and when she was caught she blamed Reina. Looking back, it was a dramatic response to experiencing new emotions that no one taught her how to deal with. Shock, grief, anger--you know the works.

When her friend pointed to Reina as the 'real' culprit, Reina knew full well her parents would not believe her when she said other wise. 

So, when she was standing side by side with her new enemy, she saw only one correct reaction. She turned to the pig-tailed betrayer, and _decked the little liar in the face._

What followed was obnoxious wail _(I didn’t even hit her that hard!)_ , a bloody nose _(Oh, big deal!)_ , and a seat just for Reina in the principals office _(She deserved it!)_.

A two month suspension was then laid out. Her ‘break’ from school consisted of lectures from her mother every other day and screaming matches with her father in between. When time had run its course and she was allowed back at the scene of the crime, she was... alone.

Rumors swallowed up the school while she was away. Fueled by her ex friends and her lack of any defense, the image of Reina that everyone saw was a stranger to herself. It gave her a complex, of course. Any child who gets ostracized by their peers is bound to get one. 

Even when middle school came about, the rumors never changed their tune to anything less than vicious. Brooding alone in the back of class everyday was her new comfort. She learned the best way to deal with anger was to let it grow cold.

She kept her opinions tied tightly around her tongue, so when even the attempt of bravery decided to strike her, she struggled to get the words out.

All from a little bullying. 

She didn't have that much self-esteem to begin with.

It shamed her when her was left gaping like a dying fish. The embarrassment tightened the strings even more. She tasted the iron ting of blood in her mouth more often than not. From actual injury to destructive depressive spirals, she was left feeling like a vampire. Cold, detached, and monstrous. 

Maybe those rumors told the truth, and she was just to dumb to see it.

“Varania?”

Her lack of a back bone was what led her to following a fairy tale like hero. Maybe that was the only way to prove them all wrong. Or maybe it was just another perfect example of her being a _leech_. Eventually she was stuck, leaving was impossible with how dependent she became. Unable to say no to his requests, she was terrified of him learning the truth about her. She was scared of the day he realized that she was the villain that needed to be put down.

Or, considering the setting--being thought of as dumb possessed girl. One who let a demon take hold of her body in a moment of weakness. She could see it, and she wouldn’t be mad when the day came of his accusations. 

Yet that day had yet to come. 

Garrett Hawke wasn’t someone she immediately understood.

He wasn’t her Hawke. He wasn’t the character she played as late into the night instead of finishing her homework as a teen. He was quick to the point, no nonsense, and rather... no, he was just--oh, it was hard to explain. 

He was a person, Reina told herself during the expedition into the deep roads. People were bound to make mistakes, and the persona people used in public was rarely one that actually reflected who they were. She couldn’t look at things as if it was a game. Real life was full of shades of grey. Or at least, that was what her father told her.

“I.. I remember you. We played in our masters courtyard while Mother worked. You called me..”

Despite it all, having to hold him while he cried proved her point to herself. He had to watch as the taint put Bethany through horrible pain, he had to watch as the Wardens took her away with no promise of survival. _See,_ she told herself, _he isn’t some heartless killer._

Sure, he was mean at times, but he was Hawke. Kirkwall wasn’t a forgiving city, being all sunshine and rainbows wasn’t exactly a wise decision. He was The Hero of Kirkwall. Sometimes Varric let her read his firsts drafts of The Champion. Though there were a few embellishments, it was true. It reminded her that no one else would have dared to challenged the Arishok except for him, he came from nothing, he lost a brother and then a sister. But he still got up every morning, he still fought slavers and bandits like it was nothing, he was still Hawke. 

“Leto. That’s your name.”

When he invited her to live with him in his estate, he showed her sides of him that he showed no one else. Even when there were so many other, no doubt _better_ people he could have spoken too. Isabela was gorgeous, funny too. No one could tell her was to do, or who to be. Merrill was so sweet, but everyone underestimated how strong she really was. She wasn’t a child, and let people know with a quick tongue and easily mistaken sarcasm.

Anders lived a long life, always bound to obey others. Until one day he chose to defy them. Fenris was cautious, and so powerful that it was something that Reina often forgot. One day they shared a drink and shared laughs, then the next day he pulled another persons heart out.

Hawke said he liked her because she was none of those things. It made her feel good, but it also made her hate herself a little more everyday.

Reina was quiet and practical. She had no requests of him, there was no one searching for her or any type of trouble past that ever came to light over the years. He never asked to find out otherwise. Varric unintentionally gave her a backstory when she didn’t have one. He spoke so well that everyone considered it truth, even when he was just weaving a story. 

> ~~_“You’re kidding me! You have runaway princess written all over you, Stabs.”_ ~~
> 
> ~~_“Nothing I say will change you’re mind, will it? I’ve been apart of Antivas merchant guild for the past four years, I’d rather you judge me on that than anything else.”_ ~~

It was a bit funny how Varric also told stories of Hawke's adventures in the Hanged Man, and when there was one happening in it, he was too busy to show.

“Ah, my little Fenris. Predicable as always.” 

When Reina first ventured into the Hanged Man a few years ago, it was after her latest job ended. It was just another bundle of cargo that needed guarding from Antiva to Kirkwall, real simple. It would have been a crime to be in Kirkwall and not even stop in the dingy tavern, at least in her mind it was. Especially considering how the second dragon age game was the one thing keeping her alive when she was a teenager. 

“I’m sorry it came to this, Leto.”

“You led him here.”

Then she met Varric. He offered her a small job the carta needed outside assistance for. An under the table deal that she had no problem with doing. After that she met Hawke and the rest was history. Now she had an engagement ring on her finger and a future mother in-law who was coming up with baby names.

~~_(Reina didn’t want to get married or have kids, but the tie around her tongue was so tight it felt like barbed wire.What would he have done if she said no?)_ ~~

“Now, now, Fenris. Don’t blame your sister. She did what any good Imperial citizen should.”

It was weird, in a way. She was more homesick for Antiva than earth. She missed the smells of spices in the crowded city, she missed the loose clothing and expensive leather gloves, she missed her neighbors and co-workers. She missed the life she crafted out, all on her own.

“I never wanted these filthy markings, Danarius! But I wont let you kill me to get them.”

She thought back to Isabela. The pirate cornered her a few days after Hawke, Merrill, and her went to Sundermont. It was after Hawke ~~slaughtered~~ failed to talk the rest of her clan down. She asked her if she was okay. Reina thought it was strange, because Merrill was who lost her family. ~~_Reina had done her mourning alone._~~

Isabela asked Reina if she would join her and Merrill one day if she managed to get a new boat. 

Two days later Hawke proposed. 

“Oh, how little you know, my pet. And this is your new master, then? The champion of Kirkwall? Impressive.”

Reina rubbed her thumb over the red gem on her ring. 

“If you want him, he’s yours.”

“What?!”

Panic wasn’t a tone that Reina ever heard from Fenris before. Fear, yes. Even when he was slicing down slavers on the coast, she could see the brief flash in his eyes when he saw their whips. But he never faltered, he brought his sword down on them with no hesitation.

Was that why her stomach was turning?

“No! Tell me you won’t do this!”

Merrill's voice felt oddly clear in Reina’s fuzzy brain. Yet... Merrill wasn’t moving. Her voice was sincere, filled with emotion, but she made no move to take her staff in hand. 

“Interesting. I’ll make it worth your while, of course. The power of the imperium will be at your disposal.” 

_Is this really happening?_

At that moment, Reina remembered Hawke had to get stitches below his ribs yesterday after a gang of bandits started getting too comfortable in Hightown. 

“Don’t do this Hawke, I need you.”

Reina knew Hawke. He didn’t waste words--when he said something it meant it. Reina didn’t understand how Fenris didn’t know that, after all of the mages he sent back to the tower. Even after they told him what would happen to them. Even after they begged.

Maybe he saw in Hawke what Reina also saw in him. 

Everyone wanted someone on their side, after all. 

“You’re on your own, Fenris.”

Hawke told Reina he liked her because she was quiet and practical. She assumed he was also talking about her fighting style as well. Because no one heard her when she took her daggers off her back. 

When she crept up on someone, they never heard or saw her. Living in a city of crows taught you how to blend into the shadows like them. 

“...I should not be surprised.”

She helped Hawke take off and on his armor everyday, she knew where the gaps in the metal were. 

“This is wrong--!” 

But for some reason, it didn’t feel wrong.

When Hawke stumbled to the floor, clutching his side, Reina didn’t feel the same sort of shame that usually left her paralyzed.

There was a gurgle that caught in his throat. He scrambled around on the floor, turning around to see only his _lover_ looking down at him. 

_Did he love me? Did he really want a life with me?_

Reina wouldn’t forget the sight. The look on his face was one that would follow her forever, she thought. 

_Did **I** want a life with him?_

“You’re right Merrill,” Reina adjusted her grip on her daggers, “It is wrong.”

The first time Reina had ever been betrayed, it was over something that didn’t really matter. One test that held no power of her future. Yet she was so quick to defend herself. How _dare_ that kid try to pass the blame onto her. How _dare_ everyone leave her. _How dare no one believe her._

She told herself that she would have never done that to a friend. 

But it was just as easy slicing a hero’s throat as it was a villains.

It didn’t feel any different when Merrill took of her staff and started to turning Danarius’s goons into ice. It felt the same as fighting along side Fenris on the coast as it did in the tavern. Just with one person missing.

“You are no longer my master.”

Fenris was always nice to her. 

It was easy to forget that everything and everyone around her were apart of a story, once. It felt like she just...blinked after Varric introduced her to Hawke, and then she was there. With perfectly still hands covered in blood. 

The blue glow of Fenris’s markings barely registered in Reina’s head. 

The sound of a neck being snapped, then body falling to the floor. 

Even as Merrill put her hand on her shoulder, looking at her with those eyes that always forced Reina to look away, it was hard to understand how it was all real. It had been years since she woke up alone in Thedas, but it still felt like yesterday. She still felt like an outsider, a pretender. _A liar._

“I had no choice, Leto.”

Did Reina have one either?

“Reina... I don’t know what to say, oh Mythal guide us--” Merril’s voice always had a slight tremor to it. At that moment though she was speaking so fast Reina couldn’t keep up. “If only I acted as fast as you did maybe you wouldn’t have had to--oh this is all my fault isn’t it? Please Reina, I’m so sorry. You _loved_ him. Creators watch over us.”

Reina sucked in a breath while she tried to remember what the tavern owner in Antiva taught her after she killed someone for the first time. Attempting to re-ground herself. Attempting to stay alert, because even if it felt like it, time never stopped.

She needed to step up, because what happened next would be on her shoulders. The fate of Thedas was on her shoulders, not just Kirkwall. All because she killed a main character. Her friend. Her lover. 

She committed the ultimate betrayal to stop another one. 

It didn’t feel like a heroic act, but letting Fenris be taken away felt villainous for sure. 

“Fenris, stop.” Her voice was so loud, so unlike her--she caused herself to be surprised. Perhaps even more so than Merrill and Fenris. The sternness in it, it almost felt like had no right to be spoken from her in the state she was in. 

The lyrium tattooed throughout Fenris sizzled, and its strange blue hue faded into nothing. Fenris had never looked Reina in the eye before, but that day he did. 

“She’s your sister, Fenris. She’s just as much a victim of him. Killing her isn’t right.”

_Isn’t right._

Was Reina the right person to act like she knew that? Right verse wrong. It was so much harder to differentiate when you’ve taken more lives than you’ve saved. She never made the decision to learn how to fight, she never picked up her daggers with the plan to kill. Yet she could never avoid it. Kill one person one day, then two the next. Then three, then four, and g _od I can’t focus of serving fucking ale because no matter how much I scrub I still smell of blood._

She got so good a killing, she got job offers because of it. 

She was able to eat better, live better, protect herself better. 

Maybe if she never stabbed that thief in the tavern back home, she’d never end up in Kirkwall. She would have never ventured in the the hanged man. She would have never followed _Hawke_. 

Merrill put her hand on Fenris’s arm, a pained look on her face as she had him take a step back from his sister. He looked down, not meeting anyone's gaze. Instead his eyes settled on the blood pooling beneath Kirkwalls own savior. In the silence, his sister made a break for the door without a single word. 

“Being alone,” Fenris broke the stillness in the room with a hesitant voice. “The feeling never leaves, does it?”

“Sometimes it does.” Reina whispered, her thumb rubbing the gem on her ring again, “But I think I’ve forgotten the trick to it.”

“Oh, Isabela knows lots of tricks!” Merrill said. “...She also knows how to get rid of body. Maybe we should do that before Aveline finds out, and deal with the very sad questions later?”

“Yes, that’s a good idea.” Fenris replied in a voice just above a whisper.

The Hero was dead. His end brought about by his future wife. She wondered if that was a story Varric was expecting to write. What a twist, at the very least. 

“Reina, you don’t have to--”

“I rather I did.” She cut Merrill off. “I... should see this to the end. No, it’s more like I have to.”

Reina was a lot of things to different people. 

Once she was a runaway noble, working in a tavern with the most broken Antivan ever heard. Then she was the muscle, threatening the drunkards who didn’t pay their tab with stab wounds. Soon she was a guild member, eating good food and speaking as fluently as an actual noble. 

Then she turned into just a pretty face. Another member of a rag tag team of misfits. Her name held no weight in the city of chains. She accepted nick names and did things she didn’t feel good about. She looked for excuses for others and but always blamed herself. 

She thought it was just faster to say she was a coward with no spine. She let the wind decide who she was going to be, with no protest on her part. Maybe it was time for that to change.

When Isabela said she needed to cut Garrett’s arms off to fit him in a bag and throw him in the ocean, Reina pulled the red gem out of her band. When Fenris brought his sword down with a nod, she looked through ruby at the gruesome sight. 

If she squinted, there was no blood at all. Everyone was red and the room didn’t smell of a stomach twisting scent of iron. But that obviously wasn’t the case.

When she put the gem back in her ring, she wondered if he ever knew she hated the color red. He probably wouldn’t have cared, now that she thought about it. 

She should have punched Garrett Hawke in the face the moment she saw the bastard.

**Author's Note:**

> hhmm. im heavily depressed and wrote this to distract myself
> 
> So. random tidbit. 
> 
> I decided to make them engaged bc she's gives of the vibe of 'the kind of girl you'd introduce to your family' at first glance, also bc hawke would probably pick up on everyone getting sick of his shit and not wanting to lose her. He did like her, but he was also an asshole.


End file.
